I've had a few discussions with people around Penn State about the new copyright ruling regarding circumventing copy protection to access video clips so they could be used in new video works. It's really complex since it involves copyright law, fair use, the TEACH Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Becky Albitz sketched out a diagram to help navigate these issues and then our artist, Dave Stong, turned it into a nice diagram. So here is the end result - I hope you find it useful. Click below to download it.
Recently in Remix Media Category
The purpose of Fair Use is really to give people a way of getting around
copyright in limited and reasonable cases that serve the public good,
such as reporting the news. Fair Use is not a hard and fast set of rules. It's defined by needs, intentions, existing practice, case law (court rulings), reasonable uses, and other fuzzy factors. For example, there is no hard and fast rule dictating "you can use five minutes of a copyrighted movie for non-profit purposes." People assume that those rules exist, but they don't.
Now enter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). One thing that was pretty clear from the DMCA: it is illegal to break the Content Scrambling System that is on most commercial DVDs. So if you own a DVD at home and want to make a digital copy to put on your iPad and take on a trip, you can't legally do it if the DVD is encrypted. [Some companies are adding a "digital download" or "electronic copy" included as part of purchasing the DVD. There are also ways around this like recording a television that is playing a DVD, but there is usually significant loss in the audio and video quality and it's a time consuming process.]
Got all that so far? Even what I stated above is an oversimplification, but you should get the gist: Fair Use guidelines say that you can use video clips for purposes such as education, criticism, and parody. But you can't get those clips from DVDs since that would involve breaking the DVD encryption.
Those rules changed on July 28. According to the new rules, people can circumvent DVD encryption for the purpose of incorporating "short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment" as long as there is no other reasonable way to get the video. Specifically, it mentions educational uses by college and university faculty, film and media students, documentary film-making, and non-commercial videos.
It appears that a non-film student could use video clips, as long as they are non-commercial. They also have to become part of a new work - so you aren't allowed to take a video clip and just post it online. If you make that video clip part of another video that talks about the first, you should be in good shape. What if you embed that video clip in your blog and write about the clip? Is that a new work? Good question. I don't have an answer. They may mean a new video work, but that's not specified.
And what does "short portion" mean? This is where that Fair Use fuzziness comes into play again. My rule is the same that I use for writing: only take what you really need and make sure everyone gets credit for their work.
[To be fair, the ruling also included decisions that will affect the cell phone market, eBook text-to-speech functions, and software testing. You may want to read it yourself. It's pretty short and understandable.]
There is a lot of interest in this new ruling and what it means for higher education. For other perspectives on the decision, you may want to check out the following:
Center for Social Media
Chronicle of Higher Education
Electronic Fontier Foundation
Now enter the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). One thing that was pretty clear from the DMCA: it is illegal to break the Content Scrambling System that is on most commercial DVDs. So if you own a DVD at home and want to make a digital copy to put on your iPad and take on a trip, you can't legally do it if the DVD is encrypted. [Some companies are adding a "digital download" or "electronic copy" included as part of purchasing the DVD. There are also ways around this like recording a television that is playing a DVD, but there is usually significant loss in the audio and video quality and it's a time consuming process.]
Got all that so far? Even what I stated above is an oversimplification, but you should get the gist: Fair Use guidelines say that you can use video clips for purposes such as education, criticism, and parody. But you can't get those clips from DVDs since that would involve breaking the DVD encryption.
Those rules changed on July 28. According to the new rules, people can circumvent DVD encryption for the purpose of incorporating "short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment" as long as there is no other reasonable way to get the video. Specifically, it mentions educational uses by college and university faculty, film and media students, documentary film-making, and non-commercial videos.
It appears that a non-film student could use video clips, as long as they are non-commercial. They also have to become part of a new work - so you aren't allowed to take a video clip and just post it online. If you make that video clip part of another video that talks about the first, you should be in good shape. What if you embed that video clip in your blog and write about the clip? Is that a new work? Good question. I don't have an answer. They may mean a new video work, but that's not specified.
And what does "short portion" mean? This is where that Fair Use fuzziness comes into play again. My rule is the same that I use for writing: only take what you really need and make sure everyone gets credit for their work.
[To be fair, the ruling also included decisions that will affect the cell phone market, eBook text-to-speech functions, and software testing. You may want to read it yourself. It's pretty short and understandable.]
There is a lot of interest in this new ruling and what it means for higher education. For other perspectives on the decision, you may want to check out the following:
Center for Social Media
Chronicle of Higher Education
Electronic Fontier Foundation
This video does a good job at explaining why we should share what we're doing and then explains the next step. A Creative Commons license lets you share your work the way you want it to be shared: free for all, no remixing, non-commercial use only, requiring others to share their remixed versions of your work, etc... Good stuff -- and the video itself is an interesting demonstration of remixed media.
In the midst of putting together some resources for an Online Issues Forum presentation, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the elements of a Creative Commons license, so people would have a better idea of what the symbols mean and what they can do with those resources. This page on the Creative Commons site is called "Meet the Licenses" and explains each of the combination of license provisions. For example, the little person means that you need to give credit to the person who created the orginal media. The dollar sign crossed out means that the media can only be used for noncommercial purposes. So is an educational institution noncommercial? I found out that the noncommercial provision is being studied now and new guidelines will be released in 2009. The old draft guidelines say that nonprofit educational institutions fall within noncommercial use. However, if you modify the content and keep it behind a password, you may be violating other provisions, such as the "share alike" requirement (that's the little circular arrow icon.
At the 2008 Learning Design Summer Camp, Dr. Matt Jackson from the College of Communications talked with us about many topics related to the creation and use of digital media in higher education: Copyright, Fair Use, TEACH Act, mashups, and so forth. The discussion is at the heart of this copyright site and I think that Matt did a very nice job of explaining the complexity of intellectual property issues. After the bulk of his presentation, the audience had many questions about issues such as news reporting, making parodies, YouTube, citations, artwork from museums, musical performances, etc...
What can you do if you want to include a photograph in a project or presentation? The American Society of Picture Professionals has created some guidelines that could help you find and contact a photographer who took an image that you would like to use. Also, the online photo sharing service, Flickr, has an advance search which lets you search for images that have a Creative Commons license. A Creative Commons license may permit you to use an image taken by someone else with some restrictions. For example, the photographer may limit their images so they can only be used for non-commercial purposes. In most cases, that includes student projects.
Sandy Thatcher from the Penn State University Press passed along this fair use guide. It was produced by the Center for Social Media. It covers six topics and how they related to "fair use":
- Commenting on or critiquing of copyrighted material
- Using copyrighted material for illustration or example
- Capturing copyrighted material incidentally or accidentally
- Reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or discuss an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon
- Copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
- Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning (often unlikely) relationships between the elements
Determining the copyright status of a published work depends on a lot of factors, even when the author died! This is a very interesting Flash-based tool that helps you determine whether a printed work is protected by copyright or not. There is also a physical version of the copyright slider that you can order if you are so inclined.
This mashup of dozens of Disney cartoons explains the very basic principles of copyright and fair use. Fair warning: the opinions expressed in this video favor the public domain over copyright laws and companies who are profit-driven.
The video itself is an interesting case study of fair use. The video wasn't produced by Disney and I seriously doubt that the creators got Disney's permission to use these clips. However, in my non-legal opinion, this is a transformative work. It doesn't compete with the original work and it is educational, a critical commentary, and a parody at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to be sitting in a court room across from Disney lawyers and have to defend the legality of this video. But personally, I think it is brilliant.
At the 2008 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium, Lawrence Lessig (law professor, author, and founder of Creative Commons) came to Penn State to give his keynote presentation. He talked for about 45 minutes about current interpretation of copyright law, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, examples of remixed media, and alternative licenses.
Teaching and Learning with Technology
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